axiom

As some of you will know, I think "awareness" is a very misleading pointer. Probably the most misleading pointer. It seems that very few on this forum would agree with this summation. Most here seem to consider that "awareness" is in some sense foundational. Sometimes, it can seem as if differences of opinion on this matter are purely semantic, whilst at other times there can seem to be glaring substantive differences (based on proximity to enlightenment?) Considering this, I thought it would be interesting to pin down the meaning of the word in its context as the de facto ontological primitive of mainstream spirituality. So... I ask you all: Is "awareness" a thing? Can it be pointed to? Or is it just inference? What is it?

The Muppets

I agree. Reality, or infinity, or simply this. All words suffer degrees of impotence, but the concept of “awareness” seems particularly indirect and misleading - even if it can seem to be useful at first for recognising that “you” are not “your” thoughts, etc.

That was a nice read. He summarises thus: This guy gets it. I would differ slightly, in that awareness doesn't seem to actually be a helpful pointer at all - at least not in terms of enlightenment - since it crystallises the paradigm of subject / object, and this then erroneously goes on to form the basis of all deeper inquiry (i.e. the idea that "absolute truth" is self-aware). This is why the majority gets stuck on "awareness". Ultimately, "awareness" is exposed as the ego's favourite Machiavellian story.

You've hit the nail on the thumb here.

There is no such thing as awareness. This applies “before” awakening, during any apparent state in which you can seem to *be* awareness, and “after” awakening. No awareness, ever. It’s simply not a thing.

More accurate would be: Awareness = illusion. Nothing = something = appearance.

It seems to be alive. It cannot be said that it is alive though. That is just a concept based on its apparent behaviours. “imagination” is not a human quality. It is a human concept.

They are not imagination. Imagination is a concept which implies someone or something that is imagining. That is not what is happening. A self / Self co-opts appearances and contextualises them as imagination or awareness because both provide a false sense of ownership, thus convincing itself it exists. This is the whole illusion. Maybe this comes down to semantics. But semantics - especially so in this respect - can be very misleading. The more exacting the language the better the pointer. Most people (even the obvious “gurus”) get stuck on the human concept of “awareness”, and it’s a shame, because this is the final hurdle beyond which all separation collapses.

“Aware of itself” is reflection. Yes, “achieving” pure awareness in meditation is quite common, and relatively much more easily achieved (so to speak). “I” am very familiar with this apparent state. It doesn’t take much… when “you” are ostensibly “on the path”, it can seem to take a couple of months of dedicated meditation. Certainly within a year. The error is in thinking this realisation is “final” or “ultimate”. It’s not. I’m not discounting the apparent importance of the state. It can feel profound and it can seem necessary. But it’s more like the beginning state - not something to be seduced by.

Yes Awareness is a concept. It's very hard to shake, because the paradigm for your entire life has been "I am aware", or "I exist". In advanced meditation or on substances such as 5MEO, this "I am aware" can become extremely amplified, i.e. "I AM AWARE!", or just "AWARENESS!" Yet, awareness was always an illusion. Any which way you dice it, awareness is always just a conceptualisation about that which appears, or more accurately, that which seems to appear. Awareness is the great final concept clung to by the self / Self. It is the last thing the self / Self will desperately hang on to before it is irrevocably obliterated. Once in a "thousand thousand" lifetimes does this happen, the Upanishads say. Once awareness has dissolved to nothing at all, there is not even a hair's breadth of separation remaining. And there is no going back.

Yes, he has quite the lethargic delivery. Sometimes I play his podcast on half speed just to wind my partner up.

Yes, ‘I’ have directly realised this, but in the end it was realised that even awareness being aware of nothing but itself still required reflection and thus duality. True no-self apparently came some time later. You may not agree, but I am certainly referring to a deeper realisation.

This is true. Psychedelics take you to depths of consciousness that are utterly unimaginable until seen. No self is completely beyond consciousness, and many miss it - or misunderstand it - because on the face of it, it sounds impossible and incoherent.

"Awareness" is an attribute. Awareness of. It always seems to be dependently arising.... never existing on its own. Awareness of a chair is in reality just the chair. There is no awareness there at all. Just the appearance of the chair. Eventually you realise that what seems to be awareness is only ever dependently arising precisely because it has no independent existence whatsoever, and never has. Awareness is not aware of anything. It's a 100% misnomer. There is only appearance. You have to step outside the box of thinking an appearance must be for someone, or that it must belong to someone. Appearance doesn't belong to anyone or anything. And yet, here it is. This is what 99.9% of people misunderstand about non duality. It is completely (and actually quite shockingly) different to merely saying that "there is only awareness" or that "you are God". These other realisations preserve the self or Self, erroneously.

@Rasheed Sam Harris doesn't grasp no-self. Check out Jim Newman's conversation with Sam Harris. It's really good. It shows the clear difference between no-self as it is often described or contextualised and the actual realisation itself which is extremely rare, seemingly. I consider true no-self to be a far more profound recognition than a full-blown psychedelic mystical experience, although of course the latter is utterly extraordinary.

That is a non-dual type of awakening, not God Realisation - at least not in the way Leo talks about it.

This is why “God Realisation” is not “waking up”. God realisation is not achievable. Infinity cannot self-reflect. It cannot circumscribe itself since it is always bigger than the reflection. “God Realisation” is the ultimate astonishing dream… the ultimate novel rabbit hole, opening up hitherto unknown and unfathomable depths. The dream goes deeper than seems possible. It has no end. It chases its own tail. It elevates novelty so seductively and so persuasively that the way out becomes barely a whisper, a niggling half-remembered truth that eventually, with enough distance, disappears from view. The infinite dream is all that remains. A spiral of madness. Seeking. Forever. Nothing to do with awakening.

That’s a start.

The Terminator hunts down Sarah Connor because he wants to somehow bend the rules of physics (and of celluloid) and - in a single blinding flash - achieve the profound recognition that he is a fictional character in a James Cameron movie. Every time I watch that movie I can still see him plugging away. I wish him the best. Maybe he’ll get there one day. Right?

Who knows?

No, awakening is beyond all realisation. It is not what anyone thinks it is.

It’s called liberation because there’s no identification left.

Awakening is not what you think it is.

@YogiCosmos Ultimately the hoping seems to dissolve, or seems at least to have far less weight or significance, along with the dissolution of the self / Self at the centre. A self (or a Self) can still appear, but it is seen to simply be cobbled together from the "building blocks" of whatever is arising. With the mechanism of the self exposed as the house of cards that it is, it collapses and there is no vantage point remaining. Whatever appears is then imbued with a perfection that only a complete lack of judgement can bring. In this case, there is no "hoping for more to unfold" There is just this being perfect. Nothing real lies at the centre to pass judgement.